


Frayed

by BunniesofDoom



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Volume 7 (RWBY), Pre-Volume 8 (RWBY), Ruby Rose (RWBY) Needs a Hug, Team as Family, healthy communication is my kink, someone get these girls some therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29226684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunniesofDoom/pseuds/BunniesofDoom
Summary: Turns out you can only keep everything bottled up for so long before you explode.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna & Ruby Rose & Weiss Schnee & Yang Xiao Long, Ruby Rose & Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	Frayed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silverrstardust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverrstardust/gifts).



> Fill for a request by stardoesnthaveaname, who requested Ruby having an emotional outburst a la Ren after the events of Gravity. Please check them out on AO3! Their writing is amazing.
> 
> I immediately fell in love with this prompt and jumped at the chance to write it, but I won't deny that I struggled with it quite a bit. Firstly, because I loved the idea and wanted to make sure I was doing it justice, I was very nervous while writing it because I wanted everything to be perfect. And second, because writing an angry Ruby is very very challenging without making her completely out of character, but I think I eventually established a good balance. While it didn't turn out perfectly, I'm happy with how it ended up, and I did have a lot of fun writing it.
> 
> This is set after the end of volume 7. Enjoy!

"Ruby? Are you feeling okay?"

Ruby stifles a groan. The last thing she wants to do right now is talk about how she's feeling. Their encounter with Salem left her feeling disoriented, her emotions a tangled mess. It feels like something reached into her head and stirred around her thoughts, bringing her fear and anger worry and hurt and grief to the surface from where she had carefully hidden them away. Salem's words about her mother's fate keep echoing in her ears, filling her mind with terror. She's honestly not sure if she can make it through a conversation without crying or embarrassing herself with some other outburst.

Her head is still pounding angrily, and all she wants to do is sleep until everything goes away. But the best she's going to get right now is a few minutes to collect herself before she's forced to step up to the plate again and come up with a plan to get them out of this. She's the leader, after all. There's not exactly time for her to be wallowing right now.

"Ruby?"

Belatedly, she realizes that Blake is still staring at her, waiting for an answer. She shakes her head and forces a pleasant smile on her face, hoping that it looks less strained than it feels. "I'm fine, Blake."

"Are you sure?" Weiss asks, a concerned frown creasing her face.

"Yeah, you seemed pretty shaken up earlier." Yang folds her arm across her chest. "I'm worried about you, sis. I've never you freak out like that before."

"I said I'm fine," Ruby snaps, more harshly than she intended. She bites back a sigh. She's so on edge right now that if she tries to talk about it, everything will come out wrong, twisted. Best to just bottle it up, shove it down, and ignore it until it goes away. That's worked out for her fine so far. "I really don't want to talk about it."

She glances around at her teammates' worried faces. They don't seem convinced. And her attempt at hiding out in the corner of the airship to get some time to herself has backfired—Blake, Weiss, and Yang have surrounded her, cutting off any escape from this conversation. Can't they take a hint?

"You know that you can talk about things that are bothering you, right, Ruby?" Blake says quietly, her tone gentle and soothing.

Ruby refuses to be soothed. Now they want to talk, after everything that's happened? Could they have picked any worse timing to decide they want to communicate?

She scoffs at the suggestion. "Yeah, right."

Blake looks hurt. "Ruby?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" snaps Weiss.

Ruby laughs, but it's dull and hollow, not a happy sound by any means. "I mean that you guys refuse to talk to me about your problems, so why should I come to you with mine?"

Now Yang looks angry. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, let's see." Ruby is angry too, poisonous rage seeping out of the cracks of the happy mask she's been wearing for so long. "Every time you guys have a problem with what's going on, you never come to me about it. Instead, you go behind my back and try to undermine my attempts to deal with things, or you snap at me for trying to help. And that's if you don't just run off as soon as things start to go wrong." Blake flinches at her last comment, but the words won't stop spilling out now that she's gotten started. "So, tell me, why should I trust you with my problems when you won't trust me with yours? Do you know how much it hurts to see my friends suffering and not be able to help?"

She looks up. Her teammates are staring at her in shocked silence. Yang is the first to recover. "Ruby, come on. Don't be ridiculous." Her sister is scowling fiercely now. "You know it's not like that."

"But it is!" Ruby snaps back. "Just because you don't want to see it doesn't mean that it's not true. You should know that better than anyone—you start snapping at the rest of us the second things don't go your way." Yang opens her mouth to retort, looking absolutely furious, but Ruby ignores her. A part of her is dimly aware that she should stop talking, that she's making things worse, but she can't. Now that she's gotten started, the words tumble out of her like an unstoppable flood. "Plus, if I let you guys see that I'm not sure what to do, I know you'll just give up."

"That's not true," Weiss argues. "What are you talking about, Ruby?"

"After Jinn showed us the truth about Salem, did any of you think that maybe I was scared too? That I had no idea what the right thing to do was either? But you all gave up the second you heard that she couldn't be killed, so I had to keep pretending like I had a plan, or we never would have been able to keep moving forwards."

"None of us were thinking clearly," Weiss points out, looking slightly ashamed. "We were being influenced by the Apathy."

"You gave up well before we got to the farmhouse." Ruby refuses to back down. "And if had let myself waver for more than a few seconds, we'd all be dead. So no, I can't come to you with my problems, because I've seen what'll happen if I fall apart."

She's breathing hard when she finishes her rant. The pressure in her chest has eased slightly, but it still feels like there's a weight sitting there, slowly suffocating her. At some point, she must have started shouting, because she realizes that the quiet of the airship has shattered. She can feel everyone's eyes on her.

"Ruby?" Nora's eyes are wide.

"Ruby, are you okay?" Penny fidgets nervously with the hem of her dress.

Panic surges in her, and her throat feels tight. Not only did she just reveal her deepest fears and secrets that she's managed to keep buried for so long, she did it loud enough for everyone to hear her. Her breathing picks up as she racks her brain for a way to fix the damage she just did, to move past this without revealing any more of her shattered pieces. Dark spots dance in front of her eyes.

She startles when she feels a hand on her wrist, and whirls around to come face-to-face with Ren. He's trying to use his semblance on her, to make her calm down. She rips her arm away, jerking herself roughly out of his grip. "Don't touch me!"

Ren flinches at her harsh tone, and Ruby immediately feels guilty. Why does it seem like everything she does lately just makes everything worse? "I'm sorry," she mumbles, fury fading away, quickly replaced by exhaustion. Her head throbs angrily. She's so tired, tired of fighting, tired of losing people, tired of not being able to help anyone—

"No, we're sorry, Ruby." Weiss' soft voice interrupts her train of thought. "We should have realized how you felt sooner." What?

"I—no, I—"

"We should have noticed how much this was affecting you before things got this bad." Blake. "We should have talked about this a long time ago."

"I—"

"We're sorry for hurting you, for pushing you away." She hasn't heard Yang sound this gentle since her sister came to her in tears and explained that her mother was gone. "We'll do better from now on, I promise."

"I—" She wants to say that she's fine, to shove them away, to ease their concern, fix the mess she's made of everything, but the words get stuck behind the sob lodged in her throat. "I'm not okay," she says finally. The admission makes her eyes sting harshly, and tears quickly blur her vision. "I haven't been okay for a long time."

She starts to cry in earnest as her sister steps forward, pulling her in to a tight hug. Ruby feels herself melting into the warm embrace. "It's okay," she murmurs, tightening her arms when Ruby sobs loudly in response.

They're quickly joined by Weiss and Blake. Ruby finds herself enveloped by her teammates, arms surrounding her on all sides. But this time she doesn't feel trapped or exposed, just loved.

"It's going to be okay, Ruby," Weiss says, her voice choked with tears of her own.

"We're here for you," Blake murmurs.

For the first time in a while, Ruby lets herself believe them.

It doesn't take long for Ruby to cry herself to sleep, slumping bonelessly against Yang, utterly exhausted from her outburst. They huddle around the sleeping girl, as if to protect her from anyone who might disturb her. Even with her eyes shut, half-curled in Yang's lap and snoring quietly, Ruby still doesn't look peaceful, her face still marred with an anguished frown.

Her teammates feel unsettled as well, plagued with guilt and worry.

"How did we not notice this sooner?" Blake asks, ears pinned flat back in distress. "How did we let things get this bad?"

"Ruby has always been good at keeping things to herself, bottling everything up until she can't take it anymore," Yang says, running a gentle hand through her sister's hair. "But still, we all know that, and we still didn't do anything about it. This is on us."

"We'll do better next time," Weiss vows, voice quiet but full of determination. "But the most important thing to focus on is how can we help her now?"

"We stay by her side." Blake's reply is immediate. "Make sure she knows that we're here for her. That she can come to us when she has a problem."

Yang nods. "We talk to her, make sure that things don't get this bad ever again."

Weiss smiles sadly. "Then let's prepare to do our jobs. To be a real team. For Ruby."

"For Ruby," the other girls echo her.

Things are looking bleak, but they're always better off when they face their problems together.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please comment and leave kudos if you liked it.
> 
> One of these days I will figure out how to write a good ending.
> 
> I might eventually write a continuation of this, if I ever get the inspiration, but right now I have too many AUs already, so for the time being I will leave it as a one-shot.
> 
> Just a reminder that I do take requests for fics, so if there's an idea that you'd like to see me write, feel free to message me and if I like it, I might end up writing something for it.


End file.
